Interim HR Business Partner

Remote (UK-based) | Full-time/part-time | Flexible working | Competitive salary + excellent benefits (fixed term contract initially until 31 March 2026 - no agencies or limited companies)

Do your best work, for the right reasons.

We’re looking for a people-focused HR professional who shares our belief that fewer, better rules and genuine trust in colleagues create the best environment for people to thrive. At Oak, we treat people as capable adults, we care deeply about wellbeing as well as performance, and we always focus on the impact we’re here to make for teachers and pupils across the UK.

Oak is a fully remote, mission-driven organisation offering high levels of flexibility, autonomy, and purpose. We’re a national not-for-profit working in partnership with teachers to create the highest-quality, sequenced curriculum and lesson resources for pupils across all subjects and age groups.

Our culture has been independently recognised through:

• Flexa verified (93% overall score, including 95% for working hours and 97% for role modelling)

• Escape the City's Top 1% Employers – based on anonymous colleague reviews of culture, development, and impact

💡 About the Role

This isn’t a traditional HR role. At Oak, HR is about enabling people to do their life’s best work in an environment of trust, care and autonomy. You’ll support the continuous improvement of our HR services in a way that reflects our culture - light on bureaucracy, strong on fairness, inclusion and impact.

From recruitment and onboarding through to engagement and wellbeing, you’ll design and deliver approaches that are simple, effective and values-driven. You’ll partner with managers to empower them to lead their teams well, and you’ll contribute to organisation-wide projects around equity, diversity and inclusion, performance, well-being and culture.

This is a hands-on role with influence across the whole organisation. You’ll bring HR expertise and pragmatism, but equally you’ll champion Oak’s values: create the right environment, be a great colleague, own your role but work for the team, make things happen, and keep getting better.

🔧 What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead and continuously improve the end-to-end recruitment process (ensuring the timely and effective hiring and on-boarding of top-tier talent), and transactional and enabling HR services (enabling engaged and high performing teams) for Oak, ensuring regulatory and best practice compliance.

• Maximise organisational effectiveness and engagement through enabling and empowering managers across Oak to coach and support their teams and colleagues to do their life’s best work.

• Lead and contribute to projects and strategies to enhance Oak’s culture, employee experience and impact, including: EDI, performance management, reward, well-being, and employee engagement.

• Maintain specialist expertise in HR and Employment Law and be the authority across Oak whilst drawing on external expertise where required.

• As a member of the Oak Team, you will contribute to the wider success and culture of the organisation and support and role model our five values: create the right environment, be a great colleague, own your role but work for the team, make things happen, and keep getting better.

• Work in cross-functional and product oriented squads with colleagues from across the organisation, as required.

• Deputise for senior Operations colleagues and take on other general responsibilities as required.

🌱 What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years experience in leading the continuous improvement and service delivery of an HR department, with expertise in employment law, diversity and inclusion, and best practice people management/engagement.

• Experience of managing a 5 figure budget.

• Experienced in recruiting and developing a high performing and inclusive organisation as well as experience in managing and coaching direct reports.

• Highly effective listening and communication skills with a high level of empathy and a commitment to fostering an inclusive workplace.

• Collaborative and innovative approach to continuous improvement with a pragmatic and enabling style.

• CIPD qualified or a Masters in Human Resources Management.

• Experienced/qualified in coaching desirable.

💛 Our Benefits

• 25 days annual leave, plus one extra day for each year of service (up to 28)

• Additional Oak closure days over Christmas/New Year

• 11% employer pension contribution (with no minimum employee contribution)

• A 36-hour working week, with half-days on Fridays or every other Friday off

• Fully remote working — we’ll support your home set-up and offer coworking options if preferred

• Twice-yearly in-person offsites to collaborate, connect, and have fun

• A culture that genuinely supports flexibility, autonomy, and trust

🌈 Inclusion and Belonging

We believe diverse teams build better products. We warmly welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly those who are underrepresented in the tech and education sectors.

We use the Applied recruitment platform to help reduce bias in our hiring process. 

📌 Key Info

• Location: Remote, but you must be based in the UK with the legal right to work here

• Sponsorship: Unfortunately, we’re unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time

• Closing date: We’ll be reviewing applications as they come in and may close the role early

If this sounds like the kind of role and team where you could do your life’s best work, we’d love to hear from you.

Next steps

You’ll answer some questions related to the requirements of the role and the culture at Oak. After the advert closes, your answers will go through our sift process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised, and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers (real humans).

If you are shortlisted, we’ll invite you to a remote interview on Zoom.

We love giving feedback, so at the end of the application process we'll share how well you performed.

We are aiming to start interviews by end of October 2025.

We are experiencing really good responses to our job adverts. This may lead us to close the role early, so if you are considering applying then please get your application in early to avoid missing out.

We are an equal opportunities employer.

We are committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.